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Friday, April 29, 2016

Take that, ISPs: FCC declares war on data caps | InfoWorld: "While the government's merger conditions aren't permanent, seven years is a long time in the tech world. Netflix, for reference, had only just started streaming video seven years ago, Hulu was barely a year old, and Amazon Prime video didn't even exist.... The hope is that in seven years, streaming video will be the norm, and a company like Charter will have a hard time turning on the meter.

No interconnect fees

Streaming services -- and their viewers -- scored another victory with the ban on interconnect fees. Content providers like Netflix previously had to pay Time Warner for better access to its networks. This merger condition guarantees free interconnection for providers that deliver large volumes of Internet traffic to broadband customers.

Expanded broadband

The FCC also carved out the merest sliver of a victory for increased broadband competition. Not only did the agency stipulate that Charter must expand its services to 2 million new households, half of that build-out must be in regions where Charter currently doesn't offer service and where there's already at least one broadband provider." 'via Blog this'

This paper proposes a framework for advancing the discussion of this middle ground. It approaches zero rating in a manner similar to other key questions in implementing and applying net neutrality laws and regulations, such as network management, usage-based pricing, or specialized services that rely on the same infrastructure as the “public” Internet while serving a separate function. Answering these questions often takes a multi-factored and fact-specific approach. Drawing in part from those approaches, the framework sets forth factors to help determine whether a specific arrangement conveys potential benefits and minimizes inconsistency with or harm to net neutrality such that, on balance, the arrangement benefits users of the open Internet." 'via Blog this'

White House threatens veto of GOP’s anti-net neutrality bill | Ars Technica: "The bill is titled the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act and was approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee over objections from Democrats last month. The bill would strip the FCC of authority to set broadband rates or review whether a rate is reasonable, and it's controversial mainly because it defines "rate regulation" so broadly that it could prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules against blocking and throttling. It could also limit the FCC's authority to prevent ISPs from applying data caps in discriminatory ways.

The House Rules Committee voted yesterday to send the bill to the House floor this week for votes on Democratic amendments designed to preserve FCC authority, Politico reported.

Even if it passes the House and Senate, the rate regulation proposal isn't likely to become law because of the president's veto power. From telephone service to broadband access, US laws for nearly a century have prevented communications companies from exploiting gatekeeper power, the White House policy statement said. But this bill "would undermine key provisions" in the net neutrality order that prevent abuses, it said." 'via Blog this'

They generally don't understand that the usage caps selected by their ISP are an arbitrary, artificial construct to begin with, untethered to financial or network congestion reality. Or that the very practice of giving wealthier, bigger companies cap-exempt status puts other smaller companies (and non-profits and educational efforts) at a very real disadvantage in the market. Or that over the years, data has shown that caps aren't an effective way to target network congestion, can hinder innovation, hurt competitors (especially if an ISP's exempting only its own services), and confuse consumers, many of whom aren't even sure what a gigabyte is.

This book has been seven years in the writing and
researching – beginning with sending the manuscript for the prequel to
Bloomsbury in May 2009. I repeat my thanks to those who were acknowledged in
that preface.
This acknowledgements section also functions as a partial
methodology as there are so many collaborators, inspirations and interviewees
to acknowledge. The book is methodologically grounded in empirical interviews
and analysis of primary and secondary materials, the latter often accompanied
by interviews with the authors in person, by telephone, social media or by
email. In spring 2009,
no-one had written a book about net neutrality, though there have been many
since, including several very impressive PhD theses in European policy and law,
notably those by my sometime co-bloggers Katerina Maniadaki (2015) and Jasper
Sluijs, those I examined by Alissa Cooper (2013) and Angela Daly, and somewhat
tangentally the doctorates I examined by Andres Guadamuz (2011) and TJ
McIntyre. My own previous book on net neutrality appeared online in January
2010, and I was awarded a PhD at the University of Essex in summer 2010 for
that work. I became a professor there, then was appointed to Sussex in spring
2013. I have continued to work on net neutrality since 2009, writing about
developments in mobile/wireless (2010), privacy (2011/13), Internet engineering
(2012/13), European law (2012), human rights and developing countries (2013),
censorship and privacy (2014)[1].
But this book is far from a rehash of 2009 with added sections on developments
since.

This book was written in part using social media, a new
development since the prequel was finished in spring 2009. Many multimedia
connections have supplied material, inspiration and networking
opportunities. I joined Facebook in 2007 (youu='re free and always will be), Twitter in May 2009 (@ChrisTMarsden),
Slideshare in 2010[2], and while the
former is only used for actual ‘friends’ (as I do not wish to dilute my Dunbar
number further than modern life forces), the latter pair have provided a very
economical form of bibliographical alerts and other interactions, and my most
recent public presentations.
Similarly my blog on net neutrality, with well over
1200 entries since completing the prequel[3],
has had over half a million views, by bots and occasionally real people. To
view updates on my thoughts after April 2016, do follow my work on Slideshare
and @ChrisTMarsden.

I begin with the projects which formed a background to this
work, either directly or tangentially.

The first thank you is to Professor Ian Brown, my
collaborator on the interim book “Regulating Code” (MIT Press 2013), in which
the chapter on ‘Smart Pipes’ forms the net neutrality case study, and where my
views on prosumer law (which dominate this book) were first sharpened. The
genesis of that book was our work together at the Cambridge-MIT Institute in
2005/6, and our initial presentation on social media dominance to Gikii (the
finest European Internet law symposium) in 2008. The work was mainly written in
2011/12 once I finished working on a book entirely about “Internet
Co-regulation” (Cambridge University Press, 2011), finished in Melbourne in
February 2012. Some of the ideas were further sharpened in the book tour of
spring 2013.
Putting prosumer law at the centre of our regulatory theory, shaped
by both consumer, innovator and human rights perspectives, is key to the
understanding of Internet regulation generally, and net neutrality in
particular. It is why most telecoms regulators just do not “get it” on net
neutrality – they don’t care about less than entirely dumb citizens using the
pipes they regulate. Ian has been a continued inspiration to my work for over a
decade and it is to him as much as anyone that I intellectually dedicate this
work.

The second thank you is to the academics and especially the engineers
and Internet scientists, the people who made sure I understood the artefact
that I discuss in this book. That begins with Cambridge, Professor Jon
Crowcroft in particular, and MIT, Professor David Clark in particular, as well
as Narseo Vallina Rodriguez and Hamed Haddadi. It also includes the various
collaborators in Internet Science[4]
and Openlaws.eu, notably Thanassis Tiropanis, Kave Salmatian at Savoie, Juan
Carlos de Martin, Elena Pavan and the fellows at NEXA Torino[5],
Ziga Turk, Francesca Musiani, Meryem Marzouki, colleagues at IvIR at the
University of Amsterdam, notably Nico van Eijk, Alison Powell, Damian Tambini,
Sally Broughton-Micova and Monica Horten at LSE, and my ‘brilliant mind’
economist mentor Jonathan Cave. In particular, my thanks to my sometime
research assistant and guide to Brussels and den Haag, Ben Zevenbergen.
I also
must acknowledge the brilliant academic technologists at the FCC, notably Scott
Jordan and Jon Peha, as well as the US net neutrality law pioneers Barbara
Cherry, Barbara van Schewick and Rob Frieden, as well as Kevin Werbach and
Andrea Matwyshyn. This area of research would not have been possible without Eli
Noam, Mark Lemley, Lawrence Lessig and Tim Wu, of course. I thank Harold Feld, Bill
Lehr, Jesse Sowell, Julie Brill, Jonathan Sallet, Lawrence Spiwak, Christopher
Yoo, Rene Arnold, George Ford, Sandra Bramann, Tom Hazlett, Roslyn Layton,
Milton Mueller and the many other Beltway insider and outsiders who offered
advice and critique at TPRC’15, IAMCR’15 (or earlier)[6].
Everyone at Gikii over the years has helped develop my thinking, especially
Daithi McSithigh, @technollama and Lilian Edwards.

At Sussex, my new home where I finished the book’s writing,
I have been supported by Ed Steinmuller, Ian Wakeman, and the Information Law
group (@pillrabbit, @MMFrabboni and the great @technollama). Note that ‘2nd
editions’ are not “REF-able”[7]
but this is a “sequel with added law”. My thanks to the Law Department for
giving me the space on sabbatical in autumn 2015 to complete the manuscript and
to make it distinctive from the prequel, with Andres manfully directing our
brand-new LLM in IT & IP. Essex, especially Geoff Gilbert and Sabine
Michalowski, had been very supportive of the prequel in 2009 and the ‘Regulating
Code’ period of 2012.

I must also thank former collaborators who have since moved
on to Ofcom, especially where they have since disagreed with me, or rather
followed the ‘company line’ that the self-regulatory solution of a Code,
combined with switching and transparency, can work. Ofcom conducted some
fantastic research in the period, notably in 2015 with four blockbuster
reports, two of which were published in December as I finished this book. While
I did not agree with the speed of Ofcom’s progress towards implementing net
neutrality, I acknowledge that many current and former Ofcom experts provided
both critical friendly advice and evidence that the corporate speed of progress
was not always what some may have desired.
Similarly, though many may think the
European Commission a barrier to net neutrality implementation, there are many
colleagues there who have conducted preliminary extraordinary work to make the
new Regulation 2120/2015 a reality. They include Herbert Ungerer, the godfather
of telecoms law in Europe, Kevin Coates, Anna Buchta, Constantijn van Oranje, Robert
Madelin, Bettina Klein, Anna Herold, Kamila Kloc, Loretta Anania, Richard
Cawley, Tony Shortall, Christian d’Cunha,
Nicole Dewandre, and Gordon Lennox.
Members of the European Parliament I
must acknowledge with great thanks include Amelia Andersdottir, Julia Reda (@senficon),
Sabine Verheyen, MichaelReimon and
Marietje Schaake, and their staffers past and present.
I also must acknowledge
those experts on European legislative affairs and the consumer at BEUC, notably
Guillermo Beltra amd Thomas Myhr, and EDRi, notably Joe McNamee, together with
La Quadrature du Net, BoF, ORG, Digital Rights Ireland, Statewatch, Article 19 and
other EDRi members[8].
For
co-regulatory expertise and friendship, I also acknowledge my debt to Linda
‘Soft Law’ Senden, Yves Blondeel, Winston Maxwell. At the EBU, I thank Michael
Wagner and Jenny Metzdorf, and the Open Forum Europe, of which I am a fellow. At
ICANN Europe, I thank Jean Jacques Sahel, Adam Peake and Frederic Donck. At
OECD past and present, I thank Sam Paltridge, Rudolf van der Berg, Taylor
Reynolds, Verena Weber.

In chapters on their laws, I also thank experts from Norway,
Netherlands, Slovenia, Council of Europe, OSCE, UN CEPAL, Canada, Brazil, South
Korea, India and Japan. It would be remiss of me not to mention specifically Frode
Sørensen, Carolina Botero, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, Michael Joyce, Michael
Geist, Craig McTaggart, Greg Taylor, Kevin Martin, Martin Husovec, and
corporate experts at Vodafone, BT, Sky, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Deutsche
Telekom, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, BBC, Verizon, Comcast and many other
companies, as well as a huge variety of start-ups and shut-downs, venture
capitalists and others in the ecology affected by net neutrality.

I enjoyed research fellowships and academic support during
this research at Center for Technology & Society at Fundação Getulio Vargas
(Rio), Seoul National University, GLOCOM International University of Japan,
University of Melbourne School of Law, Foundacion Telefonica, Comitê Gestor da
Internet no Brasil (CGI), the South Korean Prime Minister’s office, Irish
regulator ComReg, and the Internet Science Network of Excellence[9].
To all my thanks. No-one else is responsible for any errors, omissions in this
book.

The book’s heart was written in Brazil during three visits in
2015, especially as Fellow at FGV in October-November. The colleagues and
friends there I must thank include Eduardo Magrani, Konstantinos Styliano, Nico
Zingales, Nathalia Foditsch, Konstantina Bania, Louise Marie Hurel, Jamila
Venturini, Pedro Mizukami, Marilia Maciel, Luiz Fernando Marrey Moncau. Most of
all, for fellowship, friendship, intellectual discussion and co-authorship,
Machiavellian strategic discourse, and companionship over the years at the
Council of Europe, Internet Governance Forum, and FGV, I owe a huge debt of
thanks to Luca Belli (and Marion). Abraços to all my friends in Rio, and the
CGI in Sao Paolo, especially Flávia Lefèvre, Vinicius Santos, Diego Canabarro
(and Pedro Ramos at InterLab).
IGF2015 was also an extraordinary experiment in
net neutrality discussion, and I thank all the many discussants there, notably
Vint Cerf, Joe Cannataci, David Kaye, Hernan Galperin, Stefaan Verhulst, and
the Association for Progressive Communications participants. Here’s to another
25 years of APC, twenty years of CGI, and a second decade of IGF!

If you helped but I forgot to thank you here or in the
prequel, email. I will thank you in the blog “roll of honour”.

Finally, I can announce this is my last full-length
monograph of this generation. I have authored five monographs in a decade, from
‘Codifying Cyberspace’ (2007, Routledge, with @damiantambini) to the prequel in
2010, to ‘Internet Co-regulation’ (2011, Cambridge UP), ‘Regulating Code’
(2013, MIT Press, with @IanBrownOII) to this. I am writing from the sunset
window of our new-old house in Raynes Park, and while the future may hold many
exciting open access contributions to the literature on Internet law,
regulation and the digital socio-economic environment, they will not be
sole-authored monographs. I dedicate that thought and this book with all my
love to Kenza, without whom this book could never have been written.

Saturday, April 02, 2016

We need the Gigabit infrastructure for the Gigabit economy - CeBIT: "Europe must work together to provide the necessary infrastructure. "We need a Gigabit infrastructure for a Gigabit economy," Oettinger said. This means integrating techniques like vectoring, fiberglass and 5G. Only then can the visions of self-propelled vehicles, e-medicine, e-government and e-learning be realized.

"We are in a race to catch up," Oettinger said and recalled that although there are no national border controls and a single currency, any traveler can tell by the dead spots in mobile reception when crossing a European border. It is time to overcome the borders originating from the time of Napoleon. At the same time, the EU's European neighbors are invited to participate."